In Practice, a blog featuring the perspectives of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, was active from 2015 through 2017.

Posts Tagged ‘Emergency Medicine’

December 8th, 2017

Sarah The neighbors called the police when they heard screaming. An officer discovered her hiding in a closet in a trailer. In the emergency room bay, I find Sarah naked except for a T-shirt. Her legs are drawn up, arms wrapped around her knees, head down. She looks severely malnourished, and her teeth are broken […]

October 17th, 2017

Emergency medicine is a life of interruption. Physicians, nurses, PAs, radiology techs, registration clerks: we are all constantly interrupted or interrupting. Unfortunately, interruptions and distractions and the consequent attention shift may lead to error. Sometimes, we fail to return to the original task, make an error in that task, or waste time on less urgent […]

September 21st, 2017

A year ago I wrote a blog for In Practice and an editorial in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAAPA) that discussed the factors contributing to the opioid epidemic in America. If the passionate reaction to those articles is any indication, the topic stirred both intellect and emotion. Since then, the issue […]

August 3rd, 2017

As I tie the last knot in a neat row of nine sutures, the night nurse calls me to room two. I drop my hemostats, peel off my gloves, and tell my patient I will be back. Across the hall, I find a girl thrashing around the gurney, chest heaving up and down, hands clasped around her […]

April 14th, 2017

It was a moment I’d anticipated for nearly 7 years — not with excitement, but with dread. Two weeks ago, I boarded a plane, having won the lottery known as the standby list. Due to heavy wind, all flights were departing from a single runway and because of delays, the airline had thrown in a […]

April 20th, 2016

Your feet pound a messy drumbeat on the pavement. The wet T-shirt plastered to your skin pulls against your expanding rib cage with each breath. That little tickle in your left side grows from a dull twinge to a searing pain. On the road ahead, a silhouette appears between the blinding rays of sunlight, bouncing to […]